House of Cards: Beau Willimon on David Fincher, Kevin Spacey and the Netflix Model

As we've been covering, Netflix released all 13 episodes of House of Cards, their original drama from producers David Fincher (Fight Club, The Social Network), Beau Willimon (The Ides of March) and Eric Roth (Forest Gump, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button), just over a week ago. An adaptation of Michael Dobbs' novel, which was already a British mini-series, House of Cards follows ruthless House Majority Whip Francis Underwood (Kevin Spacey) and his wife Claire (Robin Wright), who set off on a path of vengeance and ambition when the President elect fails to fulfill his promise to nominate the Congressman for Secretary of State. Kate Mara (American Horror Story) co-stars as Zoe Barnes, a driven young reporter alongside Corey Stoll (Midnight in Paris) as a troubled Congressman.

Netflix and the new age of television:

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It’s great to shake up the paradigm every once in a while.

IGN: I think we're all watching this very carefully, and with great interest, because it does seem like this grand experiment in a way to have a production of this level released all at once on Netflix. I wonder what the measurements for success are, in terms of numbers. Is is new subscribers, unique views?

Willimon: (Laughs) That’s a great question, and no one really knows. It’s great to shake up the paradigm every once in a while, because when you start having “tried and true” measures of success, and you start quantifying art in that way, you get stuck in a sort of conventional rut of how things are done. Then you start to get into artistic stagnation, a repetitiveness. In terms of Netflix’s internal metrics as to how they gauge success, you’d have to speak to them about that. But I like the fact it’s not in a conventional way about how many people are tuned in at a certain time on a certain night. That’s not the way that television is heading…

IGN: That's true.

Willimon:You can read in the trades about the ratings of various shows, and yet, is that really the measure of their short-term or long-term success? What if a show that has a small following early on and ten years from now suddenly becomes a huge hit because people rediscovered it?

IGN: Right.

Director Allen Coulter (left) with Beau Willimon (right) on the set of House of Cards.

Willimon: What if the bulk of people who watch House of Cards do it on February 3 because they decide that they want to see it on a Monday instead of Friday? There’s no way to know what success will be, at least at this moment, other than to say that we want a lot of people to watch it. We want them to enjoy it. We want it to be part of the TV and cultural landscape and we hope it will be.

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What is happening in television is what film was in the sixties and seventies.

IGN: I think what’s interesting is that the networks have their measurement for success and showrunners have their job to do - which is to create the best television series they can. There is more of a dialogue traditionally, though, because there’s that time in between. And I think there is more experimenting in terms of trying to build an audience. This is all in.

Willimon: Yes. Well, I think that Netflix is an incredibly savvy model in a way. They say, "we’re going to place our faith in artists that we believe and stories that we believe in and let them do their thing." By doing that look what happens. You draw some of the greatest talent in the industry. Which you’re going to see more and more. Martin Scorsese got into television again. Michael Mann has done television again, Dustin Hoffman. You are increasingly seeing the best talent in show business heading in this direction because what is happening in television is what film was in the sixties and seventies. You have a huge wealth of resources being put behind bold projects. You don’t see that happening in the film side of things in Hollywood. Artists are really going to go where the great stories are and resources follow. I think if Netflix shows any measure of success with these shows they are developing right now, you may find, I hope, other companies following suit. And if anything, being a little less mettlesome and continuing the trend toward supporting bold and interesting projects. Any difference between television and the internet is going to fall away in the next five or six years anyway, right?

IGN: Looks that way, yes.

Kevin Spacey, Robin Wright and Michael Kelly in House of Cards

Willimon: You can call technology what you want, whether it’s DVR, On-Demand, whether you watch it on Netflix or elsewhere. The technology is going to continue to evolve. More and more people are watching things when they want to watch them, and how they want to watch them. Netflix was one of the pioneering companies that recognized the power of that, and are fully exploiting it as they develop their original content and encourage the trend towards putting that power in the viewer’s hand.

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What is a hit show? What does that mean?

IGN: I think it's an interesting question, though. They must have some kind of measuring stick, financially speaking.

Willimon: Yes. You know what? While I’ve certainly had some casual conversations with folks at Netflix about precisely that, I seriously don’t feel expert enough to discuss it with any degree of coherence. Also I don’t want to speak on Netflix's behalf. Like any business they’re going to have their internal measurement. I think if I were to speculate as just any other Netflix subscriber or person on the planet, I would speculate in this way: What if…I think it gets a little more philosophical for a second…What is a hit show? What does that mean? It used to be, not too long ago, and still on some networks, the most viewers, right? Now why did you want the most viewers? Because you were selling advertising, commercials. You had a lot of shows that were geared towards the four quadrants. They are designed to reach as broad an audience as possible, because the more people you reached the more you could sell the ad time for. That also harkens back to a time when there was a week, seven days, and time slots for each of those days. You had to fill up half-hour and hour-long spots. And there was prime commercial real estate which was in those slots, prime time right? That cost more than time at three in the morning, or buying commercial time at three in the morning. Everything was organized and geared toward that commercial time. You put your best shows with the broadest appeal in the prime time spot. What we’ve seen with cable, is that there are networks, pioneering networks like HBO, who said, "what if you create a television show where you don’t have commercials? What is the direct result of that?" Shows like the Sopranos, like The Wire, that are bold and interesting and different because they don’t have to necessarily reach a broader audience. They simply have to satisfy the subscribership of HBO. HBO has branded itself in such a way to create “subscribership” that thirsts for a certain type of content.

IGN: I think they do have to increase subscribership as well. I think that’s an instrument too.

Willimon: Yes. Now, I can ask the question why does HBO actually release ratings? I don’t know. It could be part of their marketing strategy that reporting high ratings for a show increases the press for that show and so on and so forth. I’m not a marketing expert, but Netflix is not selling advertising time. It is trying to satisfy its subscribers. It’s subscribership is incredibly diverse right?

IGN: Yes.

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There is an audience who is thirsting for that sort of content and Netflix says, "We’re going to provide something for you."

Willimon: It has a library of tens of thousands of titles, and every demographic can find something in that library that will suit them. You can imagine them wanting to create content that is just as diverse, where they provide something for everyone. Now, Arrested Development, for instance, how will you gauge the success of Arrested Development? Well, is it’s job to have the same ratings as Two Broke Girls? No, but there is a sizable and loyal audience for Arrested Development who are thirsting for that sort of content and Netflix says, "We’re going to provide something for you." Our only goal with this show is to provide something for you and not all the other quadrants, as it were. If you create enough content that satisfies all of the different niches cumulatively, you may actually reach more people than a show that aims to target all the quadrants at once, if that makes sense.

IGN: It does. Over time. I think that the difference is that the metrix in this case can be more long-term in the sense that a series that can play over time. I think that that is the difference in the mentality. It can play over ten years if Netflix owns it for ten years. Does that make sense?

On to that answer, and the death of the "water cooler moment" in television...